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On the Bad Death of a Good Man / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

In the Boniato jail, in Santiago de Cuba, a physically impaired man, a common prisoner (for me no prisoner is common), Norge Cervantes, blind, said in farewell to Antonio Villarreal, one of the 75 prisoners of the Black Spring with which Fidel Castro reacted to the Varela Project: ”The tears that run down my cheeks are from the heart, because I have plastic eyes.”

Antonio Villareal was found dead in Miami last Saturday December 28. Day of the Innocents, may this noble child of sixty-something years who was tortured to the hilt in Cuba rest in peace. Even losing control in stages over his more basic reflexes, like controlling his urination. And his tears. He spoke with many crying inside and out of Cuba by telephone or on camera, but his olive green tormentors never managed to break him. That is why they savaged him.

Of course, nothing like that will happen to us. We are healthy and in control. We triumph, as Miami already triumphed and very soon Havana will triumph. Miami, a city largely shaped from Havana, in order to complete its historic role that after 2014 will rush to it: saving the Castro Revolution, managing a future enterprise for its militarized white collar mafioso. Putinism unaided.

There is nothing that the Cuban government does that is not marked by death (hence its true power in perpetuity). The liberation of the 75, for example, already drags with it with several deaths, including that of Laura Pollan, who would still be with us if those “liberations” had not occurred, because she alone knew how to defend herself much better from the assassin plot that took her life from behind and cremated her in order to leave no evidence.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega is architect of all these forced deportations and complicit in the string of crimes to which he in person is giving the consummatum est. The Castros just supply the labor.

It is speculated that it was a suicide and soon the press will pardon him because Antonio Villareal had “mental problems” or “was sick in his nerves.” Killing oneself is not a symptom of mental illness, but of spiritual strength: It is a blow to the arrogance of God or the senselessness of Nothingness. If he killed himself, it is because Miami deserved it. But, in any case, there exists not the least evidence that it was a suicide. Menaced or sick, what is a fact is that we Cubans had abandoned him, even from Havana.

We Cubans are all like that blind prisoner, but in reverse. Our tears are plastic, like the eyes with which we look without seeing.